


i just might

by 152glasslippers



Series: you know that you got me [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-space arc, Pre-Relationship, Reunion Fic, Robbie meets Deke, Season 5 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13546971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: Deke started and backed up, leaning away from him. “What the—what kind of Inhuman is he?”In the corners of his vision, Robbie could see Jemma, undisturbed, studying him with a clinical curiosity. Fitz was badly suppressing a smile.“That’s not what I am.”Post-space arc. By the time the team returns to the past and stops the world from ending, Robbie is already back in this dimension and living in LA again. After reuniting with Daisy earlier that day, Robbie drives out to Zephyr One to meet with Coulson and the rest of the team (including its newest member).





	i just might

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. The only way I’m okay with Deke sticking around is if we get Robbie back and Robbie puts Deke in his place. (Did I mention this fic is 100 percent wish fulfillment?) Part 2 of 3, but can be read as a standalone.

Shield’s plane looked exactly the same. It was practically as indestructible as the Charger, except its durability came from its engineering, not from another world.

Which was somehow harder to believe.

But for the first time in his life, instead of highlighting every way he had changed, showing him how much he no longer belonged, the sameness felt right, reassuring. Like pieces snapping into place.

He turned off the engine in the Charger and looked at Daisy. She was already watching him, her eyes steady. He gave her a small nod, and they both moved to get out of the car.

Jemma and Fitz and a third person he didn’t know were sorting through crates, opening some and stacking others. Inventory. The Shield he was looking at now wasn’t the same Shield he’d known when he met them. Limited resources, limited agency. Rebuilding behind the scenes.

Jemma was the first to look up at the sound of the car doors closing.

“Robbie.” Her voice was warm and her smile open. “It’s so good to see you.”

Fitz came over to them, reached out his hand to grip Robbie’s shoulder. Robbie smiled at the gesture, an echo of a darker day, a more desperate place. He put a hand to Fitz’s chest, just below his right shoulder.

“Fitz.”

“Robbie.” He clapped his hand on Robbie’s shoulder and went back to his crate.

The guy he didn’t know stepped into Fitz’s place and held out his hand.

“Deke,” he said.

Robbie didn’t take his hand, didn’t move a muscle. He could feel the Rider stir in the back of his mind, reaching out. Reading, assessing. He set his jaw, trying to keep it quiet.

Daisy spoke up next to him, covering. “We brought him back from the future with us.”

Deke’s eyes widened slightly and he dropped his hand as he turned toward Daisy. “Yeah, I’m not really sure that’s something we want to go around telling other people.”

“Robbie isn’t other people,” she snapped, an edge to her voice.

“Still not sure why we brought him back since he sold Daisy into slavery.” The words fell out of Fitz’s mouth almost like an afterthought. Offhand, casual. Too casual for the glance Fitz threw his way—intentional, purposeful. The information was for his benefit; something he’d missed that Fitz wanted to make sure he knew.

Robbie spent most of his waking hours fighting, struggling to keep the Rider under control. It was a war—in his body, in his mind—to keep the Rider in check.

But it was easy, so easy, to let it bleed through.

His heart sped up. His blood burned. His skin warmed. First in his fingers, underneath his gloves, then up his arms and into his shoulders, his neck, until he felt the heat behind his eyes.

It only took a second.

He moved to step toward Deke, but something stopped him, held him back. It didn’t matter. The look had the intended effect.

Deke started and backed up, leaning away from him. “What the—what kind of Inhuman is he?”

In the corners of his vision, Robbie could see Jemma, undisturbed, studying him with a clinical curiosity. Fitz was badly suppressing a smile.

“That’s not what I am.”

A beat, and he let the heat drain out of him, forcing the Rider back down. He felt a pressure on his chest, recognized it as the thing that had stopped him. He looked down.

It was Daisy’s hand.

He could feel each of her fingertips, the heel of her palm, pressing through the leather of his jacket. His eyes followed the length of her arm to the rest of her body, facing his, feet planted. She’d placed herself half in front of him, almost as if she were shielding him. She wasn’t even watching him, her eyes trained on Deke instead, and a ridiculous thought flickered through his mind: Deke was not the one she was protecting.

Robbie watched Daisy watch Deke, while Deke moved from shock to outrage.

“This is who you people associate with? No wonder they thought she destroyed the world.” He gestured toward Daisy.

Daisy dropped her hand from his chest, moved back to stand next to him. The air felt cold.

“She didn’t,” he said immediately, the Rider whispering in his head.

“Well, I know that now, but—” Deke stopped, narrowed his eyes at him. “How did you…?” He trailed off, looking between Daisy, Jemma, Fitz. Daisy was looking at the ground. “Does somebody want to clue me in? How does he know that? Do the fire eyes come with fortune telling?”

“It’s not me,” Robbie said, his voice quiet. “It’s the other guy.” He looked at Daisy. She raised her eyes to meet his, like she had so many times before, like his gaze had drawn hers to him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

_That I couldn’t get to you. That you had to think that. That I couldn’t tell you it wasn’t true._

They stood there watching each other and for once, he and the Rider were seeing the same thing: all the pain that thinking she’d somehow been responsible for destroying the earth had caused her.

Deke’s voice snapped him out of it.

“The other guy?” He was still looking around, confused. “What other guy?”

“The devil,” Jemma and Fitz said together, neither one of them looking up from the crates they were bent over.

“Okay, you guys can’t be serious. There’s no way that’s true.” Deke’s eyes wandered back to Robbie’s.

Robbie looked right at him. “He usually kills people for slavery, you know.”

Judging by the look on his face, the sarcasm in his voice, Deke thought they were joking, playing a prank on him. The confusion had turned into disbelief.

“Oh yeah? And what’s stopping him?”

“I am.”

Deke froze. Robbie could see Jemma behind Deke, smirking at a clipboard. Fitz was standing next to her, his eyebrows raised.

Deke recovered quickly, letting out a shaky breath that couldn’t quite pass for a laugh.

“Would have been helpful to have him in the Lighthouse, don’t you think? Why didn’t you bring him to the future with you?”

“He was busy,” Daisy said.

That was one way to put it.

“Too busy to help save the world? Really?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Robbie could feel her irritation. She was done with this line of conversation.

“He’d already saved the world. He was putting Pandora’s box back where it came from.”

“Pandora’s box…?” The skepticism was back.

“Book of dark magic. It’s how the Framework was created,” Fitz answered.

“For the last time,” Jemma sighed. “It was not magic. It was just science.”

Daisy and Fitz turned to stare at her.

“Very dangerous, not-meant-for-humans-or-this-world science. But still science.”

“Okay,” Deke continued, “so where does a book of dark magic—” Jemma opened her mouth to interrupt. “Or dark _science_ ,” he corrected, “come from, exactly?”

“Some would call it hell,” Robbie said. “But there’s more than one.”

Everyone went quiet. Deke opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, finally speechless. Robbie could feel Daisy looking at him again, and he turned to meet her eyes, her gaze the magnet for his this time.

There was a serious look in her eyes—sad, sadder than the first time he’d told her about that other place. He fell into it, couldn’t look away.

The silence lasted for another minute and then Daisy tore her eyes away from him, looked at the others, and tilted her head in his direction. “We should go find Coulson.”

He fell into step beside her and followed her out of the hangar, just the two of them again.

“Interesting guy,” he said after a second.

Daisy smiled. “Yeah, well…I think you scared him pretty good.”

He shrugged. The Rider wasn’t a party trick, an act he could put on. The anger was always real.

“He sold you.”

Daisy came to a stop in the hallway, turned to face him. He leaned a little closer to her, almost without meaning to.

“Vengeance, chica.”

The first time he’d said it to her, it had been a justification, a threat. This time, he’d been hoping to pass it off as a joke, a reference to how far they’d come, but the words fell flat and it came out too sincere, too close to how he really meant it: as protection. As a promise.

Daisy’s skin flushed, and the look in her eyes was soft, fond. The same as another time they’d been alone together, too long ago.

_I’m here now. And that’s good._

_It is good._

“I missed you,” she said. Quietly, like a secret.

“Yeah.” He didn’t bother trying to hide the sincerity in his voice now. “You, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
